THIS WEEK

THIS WEEK

“I don’t think what I did was brave. It’s something anyone would do in that situation. How could one sit and watch people trying to take the plane down, which would probably end up killing everyone in the process?”

Liu Huijun, a passenger on a plane from Hotan to Urumqi, in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, who joined the cabin crew and other passengers to foil an attempted hijacking on June 29, recalling the terrifying experience to reporters

“We must ensure that the new pension insurance system covers all rural residents and unemployed urbanites by the end of this year.”

Yin Weimin, Chinese Minister of Human Resources and Social Security, at a launching ceremony for a campaign aimed at providing pension insurance to all rural residents and unemployed citizens in Hebei Province on July 1

“Our task is to create a real guarantee of security for the Russian Federation by arming the Russian forces with equipment capable to counter any attempts to offset the strategic balance.”

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, speaking to a local radio station in Moscow about Russia’s planned system to overcome and suppress any anti-missile defense for security purposes on June 29

“These investigations... as expected, are unnecessary procedures.”Thierry Herzog, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s lawyer, commenting on French police’s raid operation at the home and offices of Sarkozy as part of the investigation into suspected illegal financing of his 2007 election campaign by L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, on July 3

Youngest Vice Governor

Tan Zuojun, former General Manager of China State Shipbuilding Corp., was recently appointed vice governor of northeast China’s Liaoning Province, becoming the youngest vice provincial governor in China.

Tan, 44, graduated from Wuhan University with a bachelor’s degree in international law in 1990 and gained his master’s degree from Touro Law in New York in 1997. After graduation, Tan began work in the shipyard business, starting with China State Shipbuilding Corp. in June 2002. He became general manager in July 2008.

Due to his experience in the shipbuilding sector, Tan was ranked 30th in the list of 100 most influential leaders in the international shipping industry in 2010 by Trade Winds magazine, a top industry publication.

Anti-Piracy Campaign

The Chinese Government has launched a new campaign targeting rampant online piracy through enhanced supervision and inter-agency coordination, according to a statement from four ministry-level departments on July 4.

The four departments are National Copyright Administration, Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and State Internet Information Office.

The four-month campaign will highlight supervision over content providers, storage services, search engines and e-commerce platforms, said the statement.

Local authorities are required to conduct special investigations and boost routine inspections over online publications. The statement also proposed supervisory guidelines for e-commerce platforms under which service providers are obliged to create specific rules for copyright protection and internal penalties for violations.

New Drug List

China will revise its national essential drug list this year to better meet people’s pharmaceutical demands, a health official said on July 3.

Vice Minister of Health Yin Li told a national meeting that the number of drugs in the current list was relatively small and its structure was “unreasonable.”

Yin admitted that the comprehensive evaluation for drug purchasing in China lacked unified standards, and vicious competition had led to shortages of some low-priced drugs. “There is also a shortage of pharmaceutical professionals at the primary level and the drugs’ reimbursement rate is relatively low,” he said.

The World Health Organization’s essential drugs list has 358 categories, whereas China’s latest version, updated in 2009, has only 205.

Overseas Adoption

More than 100,000 Chinese-born orphans and children with physical disabilities have been adopted by overseas parents over the last 30 years, a senior government official said on July 4.

Overseas adoption has become an important channel through which orphaned and disabled children find homes, said Minister of Civil Affairs Li Liguo at a ceremony held for 130 U.S. families and 200 adopted children who came back to China to “seek their roots.”

Li said the adoption system has improved constantly in recent years, with an increasingly mature legal system and expanding social impact.

China has cemented adoption agreements with 138 government bodies and children’s organizations in 17 countries.

Heritage Additions

Two more properties in China were approved to join the World Heritage List at the 36th World Heritage Conference held in St. Petersburg, Russia, on June 24-July 6, namely the Chengjiang Fossil site in southwest China’s Yunnan Province and Xanadu in China’s northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

So far, 43 Chinese sites, including 30 cultural ones, have been recorded on the list.

Discovered in 1984, the Chengjiang Fossil site contains the remains of 200 species of marine creatures up to 530 million years old. That makes it one of the most striking discoveries of ancient life in the 20th century. The fossil site is considered to be the best window to date into the marine life and ecological systems of the Cambrian period.

Xanadu encompasses the remains of Kublai Khan’s capital city established in 1256. It was the base from where Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) that ruled China for over a century and extended its boundaries across Asia. The site features the remains of the city, including temples, palaces, tombs, nomadic encampments and some water works.

Phones for the Internet

The number of people accessing the Internet via cellphones will exceed the number doing so via personal computers in China in the coming two or three years, experts predicted on July 3.

Experts at a conference organized by the Beijing Communication Industry Association said that mobile Internet will also popularize the Internet in the world’s most populous nation.

China’s Internet users stood at 513 million at the end of last year, with 356 million logging in with cellphones, up 17.5 percent year on year, according to data from the China Internet Network Information Center.

More Trains to Lhasa

China has increased passenger train services from major cities to Lhasa, capital of west China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region, to cope with a travel surge that has rippled across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau since a landmark railway opened six years ago.

Trains started traveling daily between Guangzhou, capital of south China’s Guangdong Province, and Lhasa from July 9. Chengdu-Lhasa trains will soon follow the same schedule.

Seven major Chinese cities currently have Lhasa-bound trains. All are expected to operate on a daily basis in the future. Among them, Beijing, Shanghai and Xining already have daily trains to Lhasa.

LONG-DISTANCE CHALLENGE Chang Sheng-kai (back), a former bicycle athlete from Taiwan, his father Chang Han-zhang (left) and his son Chang Jia-hao ride on a road in Fuzhou, southeast China’s Fujian Province, on July 2. They planned to finish a 4,500-km-long riding journey from Fuzhou to Harbin in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province in 28 days

The Qinghai-Tibet Railway, spanning 1,956 km from Xining, capital of northwestern Qinghai Province, to Lhasa, has transported 52.76 million passengers since it went into operation on July 1, 2006, said Bao Chuxiong, General Manager of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Co. The number of Qinghai-Tibet Railway travelers has grown by about 10 percent annually and in 2011, it reached 10.6 million, up 65.6 percent from 2006.

Wider Pension Coverage

China launched a campaign aiming to provide pension insurance to all rural residents and unemployed citizens in order to help cope with its aging population on July 1.

More than 380 million Chinese have been insured by the urban-rural residents social pension insurance system over the past three years, with about 100 million elderly people claiming basic pensions granted by the state every month, according to official figures.

Some 123 million Chinese were older than 65 by the end of 2011, accounting for 9.1 percent of the total population, according to official data.

New Electricity Pricing

China implemented a new multi-tier electricity pricing system on July 1 to tackle the increasing pressure of supplying power to the world’s most populous country.

Under the new system, the residential electricity rate increases as the electricity consumption base amount increases.

Beijing has set three price brackets for residential users and will keep the current electricity rate unchanged for residents consuming less than 240 kwh of electricity a month.

The current electricity rate for Beijing households remains at 48.83 yuan ($7.75) for every 100 kwh of consumption.

Different provinces have set up their own price brackets. The new pricing system has been designed to have minimal impact on the poor. Households consuming less than 480 kwh per month can save at least 16 yuan ($2.54) a month, according to a calculation by the Zhejiang Provincial Price Bureau.

China has been pushing for reform in its pricing of resources and energy as part of efforts to better reflect market demand and save energy as power shortages are reported almost every summer.

WONDER OF WATER The Three Gorges Dam opens its sluices to discharge flood water for the first time this year on July 3

Interest Rate Cuts

The People’s Bank of China, the central bank, cut the benchmark interest rate for one-year deposits by 25 basis points on July 6. The benchmark one-year lending rate was also lowered by 31 basis points.

After the cuts, the one-year deposit interest rate fell to 3 percent while that of the oneyear loan interest rate dropped to 6 percent.

It was the second time that the central bank cut the benchmark interest rates this year after a 25-basis-point reduction on June 8.

The surprise rate cuts came at a time when many analysts fear the economic growth will slow further in the world’s second largest economy in the second quarter.

The central bank also said it allows banks to offer 30 percent discount to borrowers, larger than the previous 20 percent, but the lower limit of the floating band of mortgage loan interests remains unchanged.

The upper limit of the floating band was previously adjusted to 1.1 times the benchmark.

MINERAL IMPORT HUB A foreign ocean-going cargo ship is unloading manganese ore at a dock of Qinzhou Bonded Port of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on July 4. After three years of development, Guangxi’s Beibu Gulf ports in Qinzhou, Beihai and Fangchenggang have become a hub for China’s manganese ore import

IPO Boom

Funds raised through initial public offerings (IPOs) on China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges is expected to reach 200 billion to 250 billion yuan ($31.4 billion-$39.3 billion) this year, said accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on July 3.

During the first half of this year, China’s IPO market experienced a slump as uncertain global economic prospects and the euro-zone debt crisis dented investor confidence.

A total of 77.5 billion yuan ($12.2 billion) was raised through 105 IPOs during the January-June period, down 56 percent and 38 percent, respectively, from a year earlier, the report stated.

The ratio was still higher than the average international level, said Sun Jin, a partner at PwC China.

But a report by accounting firm Ernst & Young said only one Chinese company—online discount retailer Vipshop—held a successful initial public offering (IPO) in the United States during the first half of this year, down from 13 in the same period last year.

Nineteen Chinese companies were delisted from stock exchanges in the United States during the first half, according to the report.

Ivan Tong, assurance partner with Ernst &Young, said more Chinese companies are seeking delisting partly because the stock prices are lower than expected, therefore “they would rather wait for better chances and better markets.”

PMI Hits New Low

The purchasing managers index (PMI), a key gauge of manufacturing activities, fell to a seven-month low of 50.2 in June, compounding concerns over the future of the world’s second largest economy.

“The falling index suggests that the economy still faces downward pressure,” said Cai Jin, Vice Chairman of China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, which releases the index.

But “the extent of the decrease this year is the smallest in years, which means that the economy is building a foundation for stable growth,” said Cai.

There are still many factors hitting production and it will take some time for manufacturing to turn the corner, said Zhang Liqun, a researcher with the Research and Development Center of the State Council.

Boosting Private ODI

China on July 3 pledged to help private companies invest abroad while guiding and regulating their investment activities.

The country will strengthen macro guidance on private companies’ outbound direct investment (ODI) and help them invest in a step-by-step and focused manner, according to a statement jointly issued by 13 Central Government departments, including the Ministry of Commerce and the People’s Bank of China.

The nation will increase financial support to private companies and simplify customs clearance procedures, the statement said.

These companies are also encouraged to strengthen coordination and cooperation among each other to prevent disorderly and malignant competition.

Korean Investment

Bank of Korea (BOK), South Korea’s central bank, said on July 1 that it invested $300 million into China’s A-shares last month in a bid to diversify its foreign reserves.

In June, the BOK’s $300-million quota under the qualified foreign institutional investor (QFII) program was all invested into the Chinese A-share equity market, according to the central bank.

The BOK selected various asset managers, including local ones, to trust the funds for the QFII as the indirect investment can boost competition for higher investment returns among asset managers, secure diverse investment strategy and enhance risk management.

GOING OUT IN A GREEN WAY Visitors observe a pure electric vehicle at the eighth Beijing International Pure Electric Vehicles, Hybrid Electric Vehicles and Charging Station Exhibition on July 3, which attracted 200 companies with their latest products and technologies

WORKING AT FULL CAPACITY Pictured is the Three Gorges Power Plant’s underground power station in Yichang, central China’s Hubei Province. With the last of its 32 turbine generators being put into operation, the power plant starts working at full capacity on July 4. The generators have a combined capacity of 22.5 million kw

Matriarch of Milk Sun Yiping, CEO of a leading Chinese dairy producer, has gained media attention for taking proactive actions to rebuild consumer trust amid recent tainted milk scandals.

Sun commanded a fast-track plan to ensure a quality milk supply at China Mengniu Dairy Co. Ltd. in June, when the company announced that it will invest 3.5 billion yuan ($551 million) in eight to 12 new dairies by 2015. At present, 80 percent of its milk is provided by other farms. The move will allow Mengniu to supply its own fresh milk and avoid food safety incidents from outside sources.

Sun also led Mengniu to learn from a foreign peer. The company entered a long-term strategic cooperation on June 18 with European dairy giant Arla Foods, a world leader in dairy farming, pasture management, quality compliance and production processes. The company will be involved in Mengniu’s daily operations, send professionals to work with Mengniu employees, help the company update production technology and improve its management system.

Sun, 45, graduated from China Agricultural University with a master’s degree in agricultural product processing. She worked for China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corp. (COFCO), the country’s largest food manufacturer and trader, from 1993 and became deputy general manager of COFCO Property (Group) Co. Ltd. in July 2007. On April 12, 2012, Sun was appointed CEO of Mengniu.